September 11, 2019 PG&E’s Reorganization Plan—Cap Wildfire Liabilities at $18 Billion Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) wants to cap its liabilities from damages caused by California wildfires at about $18 billion, according to the reorganization plan filed by the bankrupt utility… Read More Combustion Optimization to Improve Heat Rate and Lower NOx Power plant operators […]

GE introduced the F-class gas turbine to the power industry nearly 30 years ago. Since that time, more than 1,500 F-class machines have operated for more than 54 million hours. With available outputs ranging from 51 MW for a GE 6F.01 simple cycle unit to more than 1,000 MW for a 3×1 7F.05-based combined cycle […]

The power grid is changing across the U.S. More distributed energy resources are being added every day. That brings challenges for power utilities, but also opportunities. John Di Stasio, president of the Large Public Power Council (LPPC), which represents 27 of the largest locally governed and operated not-for-profit electric systems in the U.S., was a […]

Organizations operating within a mission-critical environment must adopt appropriate technology to mitigate potentially life-threatening problems. As we acknowledge National Preparedness Month this September, we need to remember what is important to electric power customers. They expect to be kept safe, to be heard, and to receive realistic estimated restoration times—especially when a power line is […]

“I hate to see things going out along party lines,” Cheryl LaFleur, outgoing commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), told POWER during an exclusive interview. “During my 35 years of watching FERC, that has not been the pattern.” During the early years of the Obama administration, “we didn’t think of ourselves as [partisan],” […]

August 21, 2019 Group Will Build ‘First of its Kind’ Pumped-Storage Project in Dubai The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has awarded a Dh1.437 billion ($391 million) construction contract for a 250-MW hydropower project in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a project considered… Read More Biomass Power: Stalled in the Market, Stalled in Washington […]

GSE Systems said it has delivered and commissioned three additional full-scope simulators for Southern Nuclear’s new Operations Training Centers. The simulators are for the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant, and the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant. Simulators provide efficient hands-on learning for power plant operators. While power plants of […]

Xcel Energy’s effort to purchase a 760-MW natural gas combined cycle facility in Mankato, Minnesota, from Southern Power, a wholesale energy provider and subsidiary of Southern Company, is meeting resistance from two state agencies. The Minnesota Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General (OAG) recommended the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission […]

August 14, 2019 Automated Plant Startups Reduce Fixed and Fuel-Related Costs State-of-the-art automation systems are common at power plants these days. Still, many plants start up units in a very manual way. When startups were rare, the implications were minimal, but as units cycle… Read More PG&E Asks Bankruptcy Judge to Back Restructured Power Deals […]

Today’s heat recovery steam generators (HRSGs) are suffering reliability problems, mainly because they’re being operated in the cycling mode instead of the baseload mode for which they were designed. The good news is HRSG suppliers are adapting to the market demands and are designing the next generation of HRSGs to have cycling-friendly—also called fast-start—features. One […]

August 7, 2019 Healy 2: The Story of a Coal Unit's Remarkable Resiliency Coal is the reason that Healy, Alaska, exists. To ensure low-cost power and reliability to interior Alaska—a remote place that is bereft of gas and has little sun—and sustain regional employment, Golden Read More Sponsored Content See $500,000 in Savings With a […]

Renewable energy and battery storage are hot topics in the U.S. today. Lawmakers throughout the country debated various new energy policies during the 2019 legislative session. Nevada is among the states leading the way forward. Several new laws were passed in the state that will affect power companies and consumers for years to come. Curt […]

August 1, 2019 Vogtle Nuclear Expansion Unlikely to Meet Aggressive Schedule Deadline A team that reviewed Southern Nuclear Company's (SNC’s) April 2019 Vogtle Units 3 and 4 Re-baseline of Forecast Schedule and Cost said it believes the working schedule predicated on commercial… Read More The POWER Interview: What Drove the Gas Turbine Technology Leap at […]

A team that reviewed Southern Nuclear Company’s (SNC’s) April 2019 Vogtle Units 3 and 4 Re-baseline of Forecast Schedule and Cost said it believes the working schedule predicated on commercial operation dates of May 23, 2021, and May 23, 2022, for the respective units, is unachievable. Furthermore, the reviewers said the regulatory-approved schedule from the […]

NuScale Power, Rolls-Royce, and China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC)—three companies working on different small modular reactor (SMR) technology—recently announced positive developments for their respective designs. NRC Makes Progress on NuScale Design Review Portland, Oregon-based NuScale said on July 22 that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) completed the second and third phases of its SMR […]

Nuclear power advocates suggest there are many benefits associated with nuclear energy. They point to high-paying jobs; billions of dollars in economic activity for plant-hosting communities; and secure, reliable, baseload electricity. But the most-important benefit of nuclear power may be that it emits no greenhouse gases, and therefore does not contribute to climate change. According […]

July 25, 2019 New York Enacts 100% Clean Energy Law, Secures 1.7 GW of Offshore Wind New York on July 18 enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA),  law that requires the state to produce 100% of its power from renewables and nuclear by… Read More Sponsored Content Timken Power Systems: The Complete […]

July 24, 2019 New York Enacts 100% Clean Energy Law, Secures 1.7 GW of Offshore Wind New York enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), a law that requires the state to produce 100% of its power from renewables and nuclear by… Read More A Fine Couple They Are (Wind and Solar Power) […]

According to the Energy Impact Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research institute focused on deep decarbonization, CO2 emissions “must go net-negative by 2040, globally across all energy sectors” to begin countering climate change. The only way it sees to accomplish this is to “produce energy inexpensive enough to make carbon negative fuels that compete with fossil […]

July 17, 2019 Egypt Megaproject: An Expedited Power Transformation Winning POWER’s highest honor is a set of three gas-fired power plants and related infrastructure—the Egypt Megaproject—which was the single biggest order ever in Siemens’ long history. Completed… Read More A Brief History of GE Gas Turbines July marks two important milestones that set gas-fired generation […]

July 10, 2019 EPA Delayed on Proposed ELG Revisions for Steam Power Plants The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is behind on its proposed revisions to the Obama administration’s effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for steam electric power plants.  In an e-mail to POWER on… Read More Wheeler: Keeping U.S. Coal Sector Alive Will Benefit ‘International Environmental […]

The price of lithium-ion batteries has plummeted over the past decade. Battery pack prices averaged $1,160 per kWh in 2010, according to BloombergNEF, but they dropped to $176 per kWh last year, and experts suggest they could be less than $100 by 2024. Tony Cooper, general manager of Green Cubes Technology’s Motive division, was a […]

Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), owner of the Olkiluoto 3 EPR (European Pressurized Water Reactor) nuclear unit that is under construction in Finland, has said fuel will not be loaded in the reactor before the end of August, while it awaits completion of a schedule review being conducted by the construction consortium. Meanwhile, EDF, which is […]

Power plants are capturing operational data in ever-increasing amounts. However, analyzing all the data can be challenging. A number of tools are available that can help. In this episode of The POWER Podcast, two experts from one technology provider explain how big data can be analyzed to identify trends and create actionable information to solve […]

More than 2 million new solar PV installations were installed in the U.S. in the first three months of 2019—a new record for the first quarter of the year—according to the Wood Mackenzie/Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) U.S. Solar Market Insight report, which was released this week. Utilities led the way, installing 1.6 GWdc of […]

Power plant SO2 and NOx emissions have decreased 92% and 84%, respectively, since Congress passed major amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990. Meanwhile, mercury air emissions from power plants have decreased 90% since 2000, as federal limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants went into effect in 2015. […]

June 19, 2019 Where Is the Microgrid Market Headed? Increasingly, today’s electric power grids are interacting with microgrids and in more complex ways. Yet, much work needs to be done to integrate microgrids and flexible demand into the wide-area synchronous… Read More MHPS, Magnum Will Build 1-GW Renewable Energy Storage Facility in Utah Mitsubishi Hitachi […]

The natural gas industry is doing quite well and the future looks bright to many observers. “We’re at a really great moment for the natural gas industry in the U.S. Production is growing dramatically. Shale continues to provide tremendous improvements technologically, bringing the cost down and growing the production, extending access to U.S. gas. At […]

Talen Montana—part-owner and operator of the Colstrip Steam Electric Station—announced that Units 1 and 2 at the coal-fired power plant will be retired by year-end, well ahead of a previously announced July 2022 closure date. “The decision to retire Colstrip Units 1 and 2 comes after extensive review and exhaustive efforts over the last few […]

June 12, 2019 The POWER Interview: GE Unleashing a Hydrogen Gas Power Future Since the 1940s, when General Electric (GE), launched its gas turbine operations, the company has pioneered and commercialized a lengthy list of gas turbine technologies, large and small. As the… Read More Piloting Boiler Startup at Lightspeed Many combined cycle power plants […]